My name is Martin Burns, I am a writer and HIV activist. I’ve always been the former in that I never chose one day to be a writer I’ve just always done it, in fact I think I was doing it since before I could talk. The latter profession came with my diagnosis, almost instantaneously actually. Yeah, I’d say I became an HIV activist almost the very second that I was diagnosed with HIV because I suddenly felt like I… had a fight on behalf of others, not just myself. I mean I knew what was attendant with that diagnosis... because it was a surprise but it wasn’t a surprise. I think deep down in my subconsciousness – very very deep, like right at the back – I knew what was coming, so it brought a lot with it including the activism. It brought that out. And really that started to inform my work, it kind of gave my writing a much more authentic voice to it. I suddenly had a tribe to write on behalf. It definitely made my work… It’s made my work, you could say that. It’s also made my writing going from being something really selfish and, y’know, quite teenage and just writing about me me me me me, to a much more selfless thing because there’s a lot of people who are still too frightened to talk openly about HIV, understandably so and… That activism was instantly brought into my writing because how else can I be an activist except to write about it? And speak, as well.

I’m half-Irish, half-English, all-European. My Mum is English, my Dad’s Irish. I’ve always said that... the only drink my Mum can drink is champagne and obviously my Dad was raised on Guinness and if you put Guinness and champagne together you get Black Velvet. So, that is me in drink form. FYI. I don’t think anyone drinks Black Velvets anymore. I was born in Royal Leamington Spa and it was ‘royal’ when I was born there. I think, I can remember like in 1989-ish, somebody seemed took the ‘royal’ away, they thought it was a bit un-PC or classist, so suddenly it just became Leamington Spa and as a twelve-year old I was outraged. Which probably tells you what the childlike-me was like. I was born in 1977. That makes me forty-plus. I’m on the right side of forty, although you can’t do anything about your age, I mean, you are what you are and I kinda think especially when you’ve gone through a diagnosis like the one I did, you are just grateful that you can call yourself forty-something. 44, if you must know. So, that is me.

Home for me is a really abstract concept actually. I mean, I have different views about of what home is. First and foremost, home is me, y’know? I am always me and I’m always comfortable or I’ve almost always been comfortable with who I am and where I am and I think I’ve carried my home around with myself and have done for a long time. Mostly because I am, physically as well because I am a traveller. And I do believe in the old adage of, y’know, home is where the heart is because wherever my home is and wherever I feel comfortable and I feel safe I can call it home quite quickly or quite instantly. I think that might seem a little bit fickle to other people like my family home that I was raised in, which wasn’t in Royal Leamington Spa it was in Coventry because that’s where I went to school and my parents moved to, that was home, but that stopped being home in 1995 when I went to university to Bournemouth and that instantly became my home because that’s where my life was, so… Yeah, home is where my heart is but home is where my life is as well. I currently live in Bristol and have done for – do the math – six years, no, five years. And Bristol really is home on so many levels. I feel so comfortable here and feel really safe. I just feel like a part of the fabric of the city in a really kind of, yeah, comforting way. I’ve only just moved into my new home which is in Easton, also known as the ghetto. No, it’s not really. I love Easton. I love the community feel here. It has such a great… vibe, and I know that’s a real Bristolian term. And, all my stuff has been in a storage unit for over two years so it’s like Christmas and birthday to get all my belongings – not that I own that many – in one place and just… in front of me and kind of easy to access. So home feels like a really poignant idea because I haven’t had one for two years. I’ve kind of bandied around staying at friends’ houses, which I am very grateful for, of course. The storage unit was useful because I knew all my stuff was safe.

There are certain objects that I keep with me almost always. Which are like a reminder of when you had a home, or when I had a home, and next time I will put roots down, which is current, currently. My world map comes with me always, just so, y’know it’s the first thing to go up basically on a wall, which is kind of the polar opposite of establishing a home, is having a map to remind you of where you’ve been and where you can go next. I guess they’re two quite conflicting ideas actually, which is me, so you’d better get used to it. I have the bag that I usually travel with which has all my flags sewn on to it which are my souvenirs. Which perhaps is the same theme as having a world map. It just kind of reminds me there’s other places to go, people to see, it’s a short life.

So… Things that I keep with me… There’s Tigger, of course, who I got when I was 12, in Disney… Whichever the one is in Florida, Disneyland I think, or Disneyworld, whatever. He comes with me everywhere, he’s like my little familiar. And I didn’t actually realise, I was in kind of… The last place I moved out of I was in such a kind of… Not a rush to pack up, but I wasn’t really thinking straight when I packed all my belongings up because I was just coming out of the end of a long relationship, so, I didn’t really know what I was doing. This was last August and I packed Tigger just into a, like, a dustbin back of clothing and chucked him into my cold storage unit and it was only when I went down to Cornwall to visit a friend and she has the same Tigger and bear in mind we’re both over 40 so judge that how you will… And she was like: “Oh, have you not got Tigger with you?” I was like: “Shit, no, he’s in storage, how callous!” Like, how awful of me! So it was the first thing I did when I got back to Bristol: “Oh my god, I have got to go all the way down to my storage unit just to unpack him.” But you attach sentimental value and, y’know, memories to things which is why it felt wrong putting him in a dark storage unit.

But for two years of my life there was a part of me in a dark, storage unit. But I was on the road so much and not settled, it was something I had to deal with. I like going on my adventures. I don’t know if that’ll get less the older I get, but I do also require some safety I guess. I don’t really know why I’ve rebelled against staying still and actually having a home for longer than…. I don’t know. Three years seems to be the average for me. I kind of feel that there’s something about just having one home that I might… It might be a little bit like I’ve suddenly been pigeon-holed, which of course I have fought against for years, y’know, when you come out and you become a homosexual everyone thinks that’s all you are and when you’re diagnosed with HIV: that’s it. You become an avatar, or any condition really. And I’ve really fought against that because none of us are like that. We’re all everything, y’know. We all have so many facets and different aspects to us and I have a feeling that I’ve somehow transposed that idea onto the concept of having just one house or one home, like that’s it: you’re done. Like as if you’re locked in for life.

So I guess in a way you could say that travelling is my home. I love being on the road, I love being in transit. Y’know, lockdown has been very difficult in one respect, ‘cause I just had to get out every day just to go for a new walk somewhere, just to feel like I’m exploring something. That really isn’t much to moan about, I know. I definitely get that from my Dad because he was a traveller. I mean both of my parents still are. Yeah, I’ve had this escapism, I guess, since…. Well, forever actually. One of my earliest memories is – well it’s not one particular moment, but it’s a repeated memory – is being driven home late at night and, whenever it was dark anyway, it might not be late, usually from seeing family members... We have other family who also live in the Midlands, or even, y’know, coming back from Surrey which is where my Mum’s family is from… Sitting in the back of the car, being really sleepy, and really toasty, and really warm and looking out at the motorway and of course all you see is black, but off in the distance, like you’re not looking at the lights of the cars, but… Almost as far as you can see, off, occasionally, you know, I’d catch a glimpse of like a light on in a cottage in the middle of nowhere, just a very small kind of square of orange and I’d think, or I used to think: ‘Oh, I wonder what’s going on in that kitchen? Like, who’s in there and are they having a nice time?’ And y’know they’re all warm by the fire in this, wherever this cottage is and it’s a weird thing for a kid to have because I’m sitting in a warm car with my family being driven home, y’know… That’s the safest kind of travel there is, so it’s strange that I was always looking, even at that age, as early as I can remember, like four years old or earlier, always looking to find out other people’s homes, I guess, what’s going on in them. It’s definitely one of my if not earliest memory.

London was my home for a long time, about ten years on-and-off. I lived in the south of London for most of it, the bulk of it, but in my last year I decided to move to the north of London because I’d never lived there and I already knew it was like a different city and I wanted a different taste, a different flavour of what it was like. And it took me thirteen months to try, you know, well of trying in fact, to find somewhere to live. So during that last spell in London essentially homeless for thirteen months… I lived in hotels. I’d, y’know, I’d stay at my friends’ houses… I’d carry my bags with my while I was working, I’d take them to work, I’d ask a friend if I could stay on their sofa, y’know. It was a very dark year, which was 2016, just before I came to Bristol. And there’d be nights where I’d sleep under London Bridge because I just had nowhere to go, I was spending a fortune on hotels. And if I found like a hotel or a B’n’B that I could stay at for kind of four or five nights it was like winning the fucking lottery. Anyway, eventually after thirteen months of this , or that, I found somewhere to live in Finchley, in North Finchley and I was so… over-the-moon, basically. And it was a gorgeous flat, way beyond my price bracket but, y’know, I was desperate for somewhere to live so I went for it… Unwisely, it would turn out, but… It was in North Finchley and when my parents came down to visit me, it was my Dad who was like: ”God, this is so weird! This is where I moved to when I left Ireland.” I mean, he left when he was a teenager at the time of the Troubles and he came over to London and he came to North Finchley and moved there and of course all the pubs were ‘No Blacks, No Irish,’ so… I mean, when I found out that story that was kind of first glimpse of prejudice. I’m digressing completely here but, y’know, I am a child of someone who was, who experienced a lot of prejudice. But, when my parents came down to North Finchley to visit me that time when I was living there, my Dad was like: “God, it hasn’t changed!” I mean, the pub he worked in was still there. It was kind of very much same-same but different and during that trip my Dad was like:”I’ve got to show you where I was living.” Which essentially I was going to be shown the place that I was conceived and… I’d grown up not realising that I was conceived in Londoner – in Londoner! - I was conceived in London, so in a sense I am a Londoner, which is maybe why, I don’t know, it felt like home. And, y’know, a lot of my family members when I moved there for the first time, they were always kind of: “It was only a matter of time before you ended up there.” So we went for a walk and, for my Dad to show me basically where he used to live and we took a, like, we turned off the high street, down a road that I used to walk down probably about four times a week, four to six times a week because it was where the tennis courts were. The minute we turned onto that road I knew, without knowing it, I knew where it was that my Dad was going to say he lived in. I knew exactly what building he was going to point out because we were walking down – and bear in mind I knew this road quite well – walking down it and there were like three or four apartment blocks, quite 60s, or 50s, quite brutalist, and they each had a name, like a woman’s name but ‘something-House’, so it was like Barbara House and Felicity House and, y’know, each one was this woman’s name and then ‘House’ and I knew what the last one was called because I’d walked past it so often and I knew it was going to be the place… That I, that he lived in because… Because it was called Wendy House and you can’t make that shit up! I mean, a homosexual conceived in Wendy House is poetic and it’s true what they say, y’know, writers don’t need to make things up because it’s all out there and it’s interesting and funny enough. So, even me finding that flat in my last year at London in the place, like just around the corner from where I was conceived, without any knowledge of that, I had no idea it was North Finchley, was quite… odd, in a kind of serendipitous manner, for want of a better word.

So, my homes have always had this feel of kind of returning places or finding places where I feel really comfortable. You know, Bristol… I’ve known Bristol for fifteen years before I moved here and it’s always had that feel for me. And funnily enough while I was living in Bristol, London actually became home for me again because my partner at the time was living there. Because I was living in Bristol but travelling up to London a lot to see him and in my defence I was doing the lion’s share of the travel, which in the end took its toll, but… London was then partly my home again because he was my home. So his house was home to me, y’know, not necessarily the actual house or the actual garden it was just the fact that the person I was in love with was there. I never would have moved in. I mean, the house was just not big enough for two people, but you know, I guess that’s kind of what I feel about ‘what is my home?’, it’s quite abstract because that person and their life can become part of your home as well as yourself. I think that’s about it actually, you know. My writing which is me because it’s inextricably linked and I rely on it. My imagination and the worlds that I create, they can be your home and maybe that’s one of the reasons people become writers because they’re trying to find themselves and find their place in the world. And writing, you know, is an exploratory act of yourself and the world and your place within it so surely that’s almost the very definition of home I guess. Yeah, this is going to be a ramble.

So, yeah, I’ve had lots of homes, over the, over the years. London on-and-off, like a decade, was, although I kept trying to escape, but… Like my last year in London was in North Finchley but it all came crashing down because my boyfriend at the time, obviously this is a different one, Sam, who I was dating while I was in Finchley, he, he went and died on me. Not on me, obviously, he went and died on himself, but… Well, the doctors said it was Sudden Adult Death Syndrome but I have to say I still think that’s a generic term for doctors not really knowing what happened, y’know, it’s just they haven’t found a name for it yet. But that really pulled the rug from under my feet, actually, and almost single-handedly ruined London for me, well it ruined myself so I took it out on London and I just went off, completely off the rails. Y’know, London became a dark place for me because I became dark, in that I didn’t handle the fact that Sam just suddenly wasn’t there very well at all. Yeah, so… He suddenly went, died… It did ruin London for me and, like I said, I got into a very dark place and, y’know, if home is a state of mind then my mind was completely shot at that time so so was my idea of home.

And, y’know, I looked for all the escapism that people do, the drink, the drugs. Twice I tried to… I don’t even know if it was like a half-hearted suicide attempt, I just was done and was looking for the ultimate escape route. Once, I think it was East Finchley cemetery, cemetery, symmetry? Sorry, symmetry’s a whole new image! In East Finchley cemetery with a bottle of No Frills Gin and some paracetamol, I mean how clichéd, in fact it makes me feel a bit embarrassed to think about it now but when you want out you want out because it’s easy and my home was falling apart around me at the time. And the other, the second attempt was... I just started walking from my flat in Finchley down the Greenway that goes all the way down through Hampstead, and comes out in Regent’s Park. And it’s a green walk for… Probably takes about two hours, and I didn’t really know where I was going I just knew I had to get on a … I knew I had to get on a train and I… I had two options in my head. I was either going to get on a train go to the coast, I thought Brighton because it was near, and just pull a Virginia Woolf and keep walking. It is so clichéd. Or, for some reason I remember thinking, or not thinking because my head was all over the place, I was thinking I’m just going to get on a plane and go to Latvia. Fuck knows what I was going to do in Latvia! Maybe I thought the cold would kill me… And, I mean at the end I was arrested in Hyde Park because I’d left a note in my flatmate’s living room. He’d gone onto full alert. I was unaware at the time that he had actually lived through another flatmate killing themselves. He’d found him in the wardrobe. I didn’t know this. If I had’ve known that I obviously would have thought twice about doing what I did, but…

I guess this kind of shows how you can attach home to other people, so, you know… Sam was a little bit like that for me, before he died and, you know, my last ex there was a similar theme. And your friends and family become your home. You know, my friends and family are my home as well. Yeah, there’s lots of different aspects of life that make up almost a kaleidoscope of what home is for me. I think romance is home in a way, ‘cause I was raised on it. My parents met in the most romantic of ways, y’know, so I believe in romance because it was always there, like background radiation for me, in a good way. And you know with my ex, when we split up he always said that romance was never enough to base a relationship on but of course, in the back of my head I was always thinking: ‘It is! Because it worked for my parents have three kids and they’re still happy together.” It’s a bloody good start, but… It wasn’t enough. And maybe with all relationships it isn’t, sometimes they come together in a different way. So, I think if I had to summarise it I would say mostly home is myself and I kind of love that because y’know I’ve survived a lot, so, your home survives with you and if home is myself, y’know, if I invite you in I expect you to respect it like you would respect another’s home. Don’t leave a mess. But yeah… I have my home and I think it’s me.

I think almost everything was probably coloured by my diagnosis. My diagnosis actually came from travelling and, as I’ve said, travelling and home are inextricably linked for me. I was working in Thailand in 2005 after the Tsunami for a charity over there and when I eventually returned to the UK, my health deteriorated really quickly, literally went off the precipice and I went down to like 4-and-a-half stone, which is what? Twenty-six, I don’t know what that is, it’s 4-and-a-half stone and yeah, I just became skeletal and looked like a leper, my skin was falling off. You know, I was not in a good place and I was like that for about two years.

And I had two years of misdiagnoses as well, from 2005 to 2007, bearing in mind, y’know, people had iPhones and it was a very progressive time in some respects, feels very modern, excuse me, but nobody was talking about HIV, it was still a taboo subject. No medical professionals mentioned it to me and, let’s be honest, I’m not the straightest, butchest of guys and somebody must have thought: ‘Hang on, this homosexual could very well have, y’know, HIV.’ But, I didn’t want to admit it to myself because admitting something of that magnitude to yourself is a really frightening thing to do. But, I did what so many other people of the time did, I put two and two together and just got a bloody wrong number basically because, because I was working in Thailand in waters that were diseased because they were full of body parts and dead bodies and we were identifying the victims, clearing the villages etc., it was not a sanitary environment, so I assumed that I had picked something up from the water and kind of rolled with it and my diagnosis came out of that assumption, because I had a friend who was a producer on one of the ‘Embarrassing’ series, ‘Embarrassing Illnesses’ or ‘Embarrassing Bodies’ and they were doing an episode on tropical diseases and because no-one had cured me or found out what I had, I was just getting iller and iller, approaching death’s door…

What was I saying? She put me forward, or asked me if I’d like to be put forward as a candidate to go on the programme and maybe they will find out what I have and of course, I was like: “Yes! I’m just… sick of being sick. I’m so bored of looking terrible, looking like a leper.” Y’know, I’d gotten so desperate that I was doing that thing of ordering wacky products off the internet. I ordered silver tablets from a US company - I was going to say ‘pharmaceutical company’ but I’m doing that inverted commas thing with my fingers – I mean, it was like literally looking for a silver bullet to shoot a werewolf. I just wanted a cure, I didn’t care if I was going to be on TV, looking as I did. And, so, I had a meeting, well an interview really I guess, set up with Christian Jessen, who was the host, or the presenter, but he wasn’t well-known at the time, he was just breaking into TV. And… So I stepped into his office in Harley Street - which is like the Palace of Versailles - and he took one look at me, and thank god that he specialised in sexually-transmitted diseases because he just took one look at me and said: “Has anyone given you an HIV test?” And I said: “No.” And his exact words were, he said he was flabbergasted. Now, obviously, I had an instant crush there and then because a man used the word ‘flabbergasted’ to me and I was thinking, all the way through our talk, our consultation, I was kind of thinking: ‘Hm. Is this the time and place for me to ask him out for a drink?’ But, you know, I didn’t.

So, we had a quick-fire like rapid HIV test, which is a tiny prick to the finger – I would make a crass joke about tiny pricks being the cause of all this trouble – and it came back in like 15-20 minutes and y’know he said: “You haven’t just got HIV, you’ve got it in spades. You have to go on medication immediately.” And from that moment, I mean everything changed but certainly my concept of how I was going to live, or even where I was going to live… Because, you know, I had to go back to the flat I was living in, which was in Streatham with a really dear friend of mine, and I was shit-scared to tell her ‘I’ve got HIV now,” thinking: ‘She might kick me out on my ear, she might not want this under her roof.’ That was nonsense, of course, because y’know she’s such a decent soul. But ever since that, even now it triggers something, because for years after that every time I lived somewhere or moved into somewhere new there was always that: ‘Oh, god I’ve gotta tell ‘em what I come with. Do they want this in, y’know, within their four walls?’ Which I don’ think many people have to think of, so... Yes, it changed everything really.

It’s funny thinking about it because for years, and when I say years I do mean decades, I would tell people that I had an HIV diagnosis but actually I was given an AIDS diagnosis in 2007, which comes with a whole other set of worries and information. I think one of the… The biggest changes for me was, not panic but, I was given a mortality rate, y’know they used to do it, I’m sure I didn’t imagine this, they would do your figures and they give you an estimate or a guesstimate of how long they think you’re going to live and funny enough the consult-… This wasn’t Christian Jessen, but the consultant at the time said 77 to me which I loved because I was born in 1977, like, wow, really nice symmetry. Finally I got symmetry into the conversation. And also I was thirty at the time and I didn’t think I was going to make it to forty. So I was like: “My god, I’d be happy to get to sixty-seven, let alone 77.”

But the upshot of that is that it, y’know, I’m not a morbid individual but it suddenly makes you realise: ‘shit, the clock is ticking.’ Like, it puts a counter on your life. I did screenwriting at university and, y’know, one of the oldest tricks in the screenwriting book is ‘put a clock on it’ because it makes it exciting and it excites the audience and it ups the drama and now, with this diagnosis, it was like the film of my life had a clock on it. So I suddenly went into this kind of ‘must live with a capital L’ and almost instantly all bullshit just kind of was dropped, like I have no time for that now, you know I’ve got to be as authentic as I am, which is kind of why home is is me because you, you’re suddenly diluted into, no not diluted I mean the absolute opposite, reduced, like reduction almost, you become like, like when you compare vinegar to balsamic reduction, you get the analogy? It’s like you become the most intense, authentic version of yourself. And that’s what my diagnosis did, so I was only ever going to be in places where I felt at home after that.

And I didn’t have as many places to choose from as well because at that time the travel ban was still in existence for those of us with HIV and suddenly with my diagnosis my travel was curtailed, so a) makes it easier to choose a destination I can go to but it changed my perception of travel, which like I said has been a home to me as well.

Negative reactions to being someone living with HIV, in a sense, in a sense I’ve been quite lucky. I haven’t had any violence, I haven’t had any attacks, verbal abuse actually quite little. I’ve had quite little verbal abuse for being gay as well, I think, because I speak up really vocally which usually can diffuse a situation. Like, I don’t think people expect that. If you don’t take it lying down, suddenly it’s like bullies’ll stop. So I’ve been really lucky in that respect ‘cause I have heard some horror stories.

I’ve had… You know, it crops up all the time, somebody’s reaction even if it’s well-meaning… For example, I worked at the Old Vic in Bristol for a bit and, bearing in mind this is an environment populated almost entirely by gay, liberal actors, mostly, and I’m really vocal about my status, in case you haven’t guessed, and I was talking about it with one young gay guy, I think he’s like 22 or something, and I told him I was living with HIV and he was like: “Oh, I’m sorry.” To which I was like: “Well, I’m not sorry,” because y’know, he said it like I’d just lost an aunt or something, or a limb. I’m not sorry because it’s been the making of me but the fact that he is sorry on my behalf because he thinks it’s something that deserves sympathy and that’s not his fault, that’s just misinformation. But it’s negative because in the sense that you’ve got to then go through that, like: ‘Oh god, I’ve got to explain to you,” especially somebody so young and gay and liberal and, I thought, well-educated. But it’s not a horrific reaction. It just has an effect on you.

And I’m thinking of a really good friend of mine actually, we were talking about it one day – and I will name-check her, her name is Zenna - and she said that she’d brought up the conversation HIV in the office that she worked in, because she’s a great ally for my community basically, which is yes, something that we need, but yes, she brought it up in the office she worked in and one of her colleagues who was kind of mid-to-late twenties, again liberal, well-educated, very Bristol… When Zenna mentioned HIV, this other girl, turned around and said: “Oh, HIV? Isn’t that what gay man get and then they die?” I’ve used that question a lot in the speeches I give because it sums up people’s perception of what HIV is, y’know. A) gay people. Gay men, in fact. And B) it’s a death sentence. Those two things couldn’t be further from the truth but you are fighting that tide, and it’s really prevalent in the gay community which is such a surprise.

Obviously, negative reactions in the dating world, of course. I’ve had people leave in the middle of a date, not even finish their drink, just get up and out of the door, y’know, and you do find yourself saying, like: “Oh, come back boys, please.” But, you’re just looked upon as a disease. And as being infectious, which is so ridiculously archaic. But, y’know, I’ve had that all the way through my sexual and romantic career since my diagnosis, but and I had it... with… I had it kind of again with the break-up of my relationship because on our first date, when I told him, when I mentioned HIV he did this thing that I have named the reflinch because I’ve seen it so often, it’s a reflex in the form of a flinch, you know, people can’t hide it, someone totally give away their opinion of HIV there-and-then when they do this... Their body spasms as if they’re reacting to those three letters and I should have clocked it there-and-then, that that was the reaction I got from him, because that was the warning sign. Immediately. And for a long time afterwards, for a long time after that relationship dissolved I was most angry at myself because I’d seen the reaction and I had years of experience of it and I still chose to ignore it, y’know. That’s like the danger of hope, I suppose. But in truth he was a lost cause from the beginning, because… I was never going to win him over.

But in that sense there can be a background radiation of prejudice which in a way is more insidious than vocal, out-and-out prejudice. It’s not worse, it’s just different. You know, over two-and-a-half years he always said he could never tell his parents about my HIV status and: look, HIV does not define me but it is something that is intrinsically me and has made me the man I am and if you’re not going to tell your parents about it it’s because you’re embarrassed about it or you have shame or other emotions it might dredge up. But it was really painful at the time and in the end he admitted that it was true, he had stuck around with me to prove to himself how noble he was. As if, dating somebody who is HIV-positive is an achievement badge, like you get when you’re a scout. Like, oh yeah, sew that on my lapel now, I’ve dated someone with HIV, and I don’t need to do that again. And if that doesn’t dehumanise you, I don’t know what does.

Y’know, I have made myself a really strict vow that I am never experiencing that again. I will not have somebody leave me because of my status. And that should work across the board. If someone’s unaccepting of you and trying to change you – and until a vaccine comes along you can’t change the HIV facet of my life – but it’s also important to know that you don’t need to. Yeah, it’s funny, I was thinking about this interview and talking about HIV in relation to the people in my life and I made a conscious effort to not talk about those in my past who haven’t stuck with me but in a sense HIV has been one of the reasons why a lot of people haven’t stuck with me, so it’s important to kind of bring it out into the light. I’m not naming-and-shaming, I’m just a bit kind of… There was a point where I was really tired of that, it’s exhausting, to have… You know. I mean, my last ex left for a lot of reasons, but HIV was the ghost in the relationship in a sense. You know, never comfortable with it. I mean, he was unaccepting about lots of things about me but I think that... not most of but was certainly up there. So that was probably the most negative experience I’ve had of living with HIV but the outcome of it is that I had to rediscover the like basic emotional arithmetic that I believed in, which, y’know, I mean two things really. I’ve always said if someone leaves you then they don’t deserve you. It’s so simple. I know why he left and it’s his choice and I respect anyone’s choice but it does show somebody’s true colours. You find the people that you do deserve. And you don’t deserve me if you leave me, it’s really that simple. Because if somebody can’t see your worth, they’re not worth your time. I mean, that sounds like something straight from a Hallmark card, doesn’t it? But… that is what I believe.

And then the positives from being positive… I mean, the puns practically write themselves. I know it sounds counter-intuitive but you hear it a lot with illnesses and diagnoses, but my diagnosis was the best thing that ever happened to me, hands-down. To date. It’s definitely made me the man I am. My health is so much better, it’s probably better than when I was fourteen. So much so that I had a consultation… Gosh, I want to say like a couple of years ago but COVID has changed all of our understanding of time so it’s probably about three years ago now and I was sat in my consultant’s office here in Bristol and she was looking at a clipboard of facts and figures and data from my bloods that I’d had taken like a month earlier and she was just reading it, silently, looking over it for probably about two minutes and two minutes of silence in a doctor’s office is… I mean, that’s torture. And in the end I broke and just… I needed something, I needed an adjective or a sentence or some information. I was just not handling the silence. And she kinda looked at the clipboard and was musing over it and she was like: “Oh, this is good. This is good, Martin.” And I instantly thought in my head: ‘Oh, she means this is good for somebody who’s living with HIV.’ And then I vocalised that, that’s exactly what I said to her. And she’s like: “No, no, this is, this is really good for a human being. This, these stats are like… These are the kind of statistics that Iron Man would have.” And they were her words. I mean, Iron Man. That’s how she described me. Obviously I was hoping for Catwoman, y’know, being Michelle Pfeiffer’s younger brother, but… He wishes. But still, I walked out of that office so smug I would go so far as to saying I was smugnoxious. I mean, it was… It was, kind of, not a relief, it was just like the medical version of a lottery win. And that’s thanks to the medication, of course, y’know, my meds are like what spinach was to Popeye. And that has been a major positive.

I think one of the biggest things has been my activism, actually, because not only has it, like I said, given my work a real voice, it definitely craft- … given me my voice as a writer, but I have seen how inspiring it’s been to other people and it’s such a, like, unbelievable feeling to know that you’ve inspired someone to break out of something that’s harmful to them. Or to break out of their own fear, if you know what I mean. I mean, like, on one day, this is last year I think, I had a message from a young guy in Chile and a young guy in India who had both basically told me the same thing, that for the first time ever on Instagram, I think it was Instagram they had decided to talk about their positive status and kind of come out publicly about it and been proud of it and they said it was all because of the work I was doing because… I don’t have the time or the patience to be scared about doing anything, which can get you into a lot of trouble in certain situations. It’s not bravery, it is just impatience. Y’know, I’m going to do it, I’m going to put it out there, I’m going to talk about it. Maybe I like the attention, I don’t know. But that’s not the truth for a lot of people so for these two guys in particular – and I’ve had a lot of people contact me who… If it’s helping inspire people to talk about their status and talking about HIV is what will normalise it and take away all the fear and shame and embarrassment and prejudice, y’know? In theory, it’s an easy goal but in reality of course it’s not. But that has been really amazing for me. It’s made it feel, well it’s made me feel really worthwhile, actually.

And it’s nice to see… Not that everyone needs validation but you do need your work to be recognised so this year… Yeah. Still get confused about the years… The Bristol Post e-mailed me and asked me if I would like to be on their Pink List, which is… They do it every year, it’s like the city’s most influential people in the LGBTQ community which I did of course scoff at when I read the email, they must have been scraping the barrel. But then I kind of clocked the work I’d done in the last eighteen months-slash-fourteen years actually and how hard I’ve worked at being an activist because, you know, there’s a lot of unfairness out there. So it was kind of, yeah… I felt really privileged that people out there were recognising the work. It’s a bit of a cliché but if it helps one person, you’re doing something worthwhile I guess. That’s how I feel about that.

I think the most obvious space – or spaces – that I felt excluded from was the dating world, because even now, but especially 2007 you’re really kind of kicked out, you know? If you’re going to be vocal about your status it really trims the wheat from the chaff as to who is going to continue with you whether it’s just flirting in a phone conversation or agreeing to go on a date. And HIV was, and still is, too much of a problem for people, you know. I said earlier the HIV was a ghost in my last relationship. It was like the third person. And it led to so many problems. But I think with HIV comes.. I don’t know. For me I kind of rebelled against that instantly because I kind of thought: ‘Why should I have to date HIV-positive people?’ I shouldn’t have to date a positive man, y’know, I hate being restricted like that and there’s no need for those restrictions, certainly not nowadays. Obviously, if I fall in love with somebody who is positive: great, I don’t care. But you shouldn’t have to be limited. Or, again, put in a pigeonhole.

You know, I’m really happy to say that I’ve been dating someone who just… HIV never comes up in conversation and he’s seen a lot of my activism and it’s so relaxed that it’s not an issue. And it’s a bit like, you kind of want to be like ‘Hallelujah!’ Like it can happen. We only ever talk about it when we’re talking about my work, so it is possible. And it’s hard for me to not compare the previous exclusion that I had in what I thought was a real relationship, from like a wider family almost, you know. The last day I spent with my ex, we were talking about everything, we spent the whole day together, you know, in a way it was still quite a nice day, and he said that he’d had a conversation with his sister about telling his parents about me and what had happened the last two-and-a-half years… I mean, two-and-a-half years of not being mentioned, you know? And his parents had seen pictures of me on Facebook for two-and-a-half years and photos of me all around his house and not once asked, like: “Who is this blonde guy in all these photos who looks like he’s making you happen?” But, when he said to his sister about telling them she said: “What’s the point?” And it was, so, it was like taking a bullet. What’s the point of me? What was the point of me for two-and-a-half years? Y’know I always thought his sister was really, like, an advocate of mine, obviously she’s going to support her brother because he was hurting at the time, but… To be suddenly like wrapped up into a box and dropped to the bottom of an ocean is how it feels. I mean, that is exclusion. And when he left me, he took everything that we had built together and the home we were making together. Yeah, there was definitely an exclusion involved in that. Yeah, I think.

Y’know, yeah, because of your diagnosis you become excluded from a whole variety of things. Which I’d like to change for the next generation. But apart from that I think it is, yeah… It’s mostly all kind of revolves around other guys in the dating world or in the gay community. But apart from that I think I’ve possibly got away with it quite luckily. Maybe...

I mean, HIV affects the closest relationships when it comes to what I’ve said to dating. You know it’s the ultimate litmus test and I’ve heard a lot of positive people say this. It’s like if you don’t pass that test on the first hurdle, you’re – with regards to dating or romantically – you are dead to me. I personally am not living through that again. There’s so many levels to it. You worry that maybe it was you that ruined that relationship. Maybe it’s not the HIV. Maybe it’s… You transpose it on yourself and start doubting yourself. You know, I don’t do doubt. But you do think: ‘Oh, what am I doing wrong?’ But the things I’m doing wrong are stemming directly from the fact that someone’s not comfortable with who you are as a human, y’know. Whether that’s HIV or part of your personality. You’re walking on eggshells and as someone who’s living with HIV there was a time where you’d walk on eggshells around people you fall in love with you because you’re so used to them leaving. It’s a bit like a vicious circle. You water yourself down and I did for two-and-a-half years. That was with muggins. I will not be doing that again. If the information that I’m living with HIV does not gel with somebody instantly, you’re off the Christmas card list. In fact, we’re not even talking about Easter or birthdays. So, that is a lesson that I have learnt.

In fact, it does make me think of a date I went on recently… I say recently, it wasn’t it was probably about four months ago now. And, we had our drinks, we’d sat down and we started talking. And when you talk about career obviously I mention writing and activism and when it’s activism HIV comes into the conversation and I saw that action. I saw that reflinch. I clocked it. And I have to say that a) I was relieved that I’d clocked it so quickly and I knew… In, like very nerve ending knew that I cannot take this date any further. So, I necked my Guinness – bear in mind that I can neck a Guinness in like a minute; thanks Dad – and he obviously thought that I was going to use the toilet or something, so he asked me, you know: “Oh, are you going to the toilet?” And I said: “No, I’m going. This is just not going to work. I saw your reaction when I mentioned HIV. They say don’t mix business and pleasure and you are essentially a job to me. You’re one of the people that I’ve got to like change your mind.” But there’s no way I’m continuing a date with somebody who gives me that reaction. So I really learnt the lesson and when I walked out of that bar it felt so empowering. I was like: ‘No. You are not the man for me.’

So I guess when it comes to personal relationships you could say that my relationship with myself has been strengthened. Like, you get complete ownership over every part of yourself. Hm. Yes, that’s how I feel about that. Um… As for other relationships or other close relationships? It’s funny my friend who I was living with when I was in Streatham, when I came home and I told her, and we sat down in the lounge and her reaction I still remember to this day, her reaction was basically, she just said: ”What do you need?” And that is the support you need to be shown. Utter loyalty, in a sense. And if I mention loyalty it might so hypocritical to some people but actually the first person you have to be loyal to is yourself, which is tricky at first when you’re living with something that has so much stigma, ‘cause you kind of want to placate people so that kind of comes back to the whole idea that you can strengthen your relationship with yourself.

Am I part of a community? That’s interesting. I’d say yes. I’d say mine. That’s kind of across the board. Yes, is the short answer to that. I feel like I’m a part of many communities that overlap. I’m a part of the gay community. I am obviously a part of the HIV-community and we are worldwide y’know, there’s, what, 39 million of us? 38 million of us. And that’s a great community because you meet all walks of life. I’ve been introduced to people that I may never have interacted with, if it wasn’t for HIV. I went on an HIV peer-mentoring training course and it was myself, another gay guy, a bisexual guy, all of us were white, and then I think it was about twelve or thirteen older ladies of either African or Caribbean background. Amazing women, amazing women, but women I never would have spent three full days on a training course with probably, if it wasn’t for the fact that we all shared HIV. So, I definitely have that community.

I’ve always had the restaurant community, over the years. I’d like to think I’ve stopped that, but you never know. They really have been my support system, just because there is no bullshit in restaurants and I’ve always said everyone should work in them once, it would teach people how to talk to each other. Primarily my community is a community of loved ones, those that you have a two-way relationship with you can offer something to them, you can give them something, they give you something in return, like very reciprocal. So it’s not necessarily a narrow community, it’s just… Yeah, all the people I keep.

Do I have a safe space? I mean it’s a short answer, it’s very similar to the fact that my home is me, so my safe space has to be me. If you’re not comfortable and you don’t feel safe with yourself then you are in trouble, I think. As long as I’m happy with myself and happy with my friends and I know that they’re there as a support system even if they’re not physically with me, and you have your safety net, excuse me sorry… too much green tea.

Y’know, I’m a bit of a loner, but I’m a contradiction as well, I love being social. So I feel safe in both of those environments, whether it’s me doing something I love or doing something I love but with lots of other people that I feel secure with. I would also say safest spaces is on a tennis court actually. I think when I step onto a tennis court I think that’s probably the most joy I ever feel in a moment, like an acute sense of joy. I think it’s because you’re so living in the moment and you’re thinking only of this tiny luminous yellow ball that’s coming at you at like 90 miles-an-hour or whatever. It’s so kind of primal and essential. So a tennis court is definitely one of my safest spaces and I can’t wait to actually have a home that has a tennis court.

I have this future safe space in my mind which I’ve had for… Probably since I was about fourteen, of like a beach, a kind of one-storey small villa-slash-bungalow kind of estancia kind of thing. White sand, blue water, water that is also the temperature of a bath, a warm bath obviously, and a hammock, because there is no-one that can do a hammock like me, that I am convinced of. This is a mental image that’s a safe space and one that I’m working towards. And I’ve had it like at all times in my life, no, I’ve had the experience at different times in my life and I’ve always felt just blissfully at ease, so I’ve kind of extended it into a future safe space. And I’m going to be simple about it: sunlight. I’m, I’m not even a sun-worshipper I actually follow the sun, not metaphorically but literally. The person I’m seeing at the moment calls me girasol, which is Portuguese for sunflower and actually a lot of my friends call my sunflower so there must be something there! You know, if I’m working at home, which obviously that’s what we’re all doing at the moment with COVID but as a writer you work from home a lot anyway, I will sit myself in a patch of sunlight like a cat, doesn’t matter if it’s on the floor, and I will move as the sun moves, which often means gathering my laptop and my books and everything up and shifting them like a metre to the right. And I lose a lot of time doing this, I think my work suffers doing that but I can’t not. So, I always feel safe in sunshine, I guess it’s the vitamin D working its magic. I don’t know what I’m still doing living in England. Anyway, go figure.

And yeah, my new home that I live in now, that is a safe space. It’s in Easton which is somewhere I’ve mentioned I feel really comfortable in but there’s a lot of love in this house. I live with two friends who I… Who I feel very supported with so that makes the space become safe because love is a safe space in that respect, I think. I don’t mean romantic or sexual, but genuine, honest, friendly love for another person. So yes, I think they are my safe spaces.

Hm. If I had to describe myself I am… I’m great. I think, yeah, I’m fucking great. I don’t know… If you don’t think that about yourself, like I said, then you are in trouble, but I think I’m one of my favourite people I’ve ever met, actually. I’m also the kind of arsehole that can say shit like that, because… Why not? It’s almost like the thing you’re not allowed to say, but I see it reflected in the friends that I have and how my family loves me and the relationships I have and the people that stick with me. They’re like a mirror to you and they’re great so I must be. And, like, probably all of us I’m one-of-a-kind. I love that. Y’know, I try to be as honest as possible, I try to be as kind as possible, I’m fun. I definitely have my own way of thinking about things. But I’m sure we all do, really. I am definitely not a sheep. I don’t know if anyone is really, but, of all the people I know, along with some of my friends, y’know there’s not that many of us who are quite so… I’m a vagabond, I think is probably the right word. I’m definitely quite committed to going my own way and I think that authenticity came from my diagnosis. I am even more authentic now because a succession of relationships watered me down, so coming out of them it made me feel nauseous to think I had changed myself for somebody else in retrospect, and so many of my friends were, when I told them, were just really shocked at me, of all people. You don’t do that.

And a lot of my friends would say I am really authentic, fiercely so, about anything I believe in. Not only my activism, but, y’know, all my friends know how I feel about religion. Even my religious friends, which is amazing they put up with me. But I don’t walk around on those eggshells anymore on any of those things.

I’m… Let me think. Not vain, ‘cause I have had vanity levelled at me before, I, but, I would say I’m really body positive, which sounds like a bit of hot-topic term, doesn’t it? But, I looked so bad when I was at the nadir of my health, so awful, then when I found my physical health again and my skin cleared up and I looked good and I felt good, and my body found its proportions and my health came back, I realised how much I loved this body that I was given. So, it often looks like vanity to outsiders but it’s not, it comes from a place that’s much deeper than that. Excuse me. I’m tough. I’m much tougher than I look, you know… The things I survived, not just HIV, but... A that relationship nearly killed me. And I’m, that’s one of the things I am proudest of, that I survived that relationship. Which is saying something when you’ve lived through an HIV diagnosis. Not only lived through it but lived beyond it. In fact, even with regards to that diagnosis, that I mentioned briefly earlier, the penny only dropped last year – and this is amazing because this is fourteen years after my diagnosis – but, it occurred to me when I was diagnosed, the thing that… the piece of information that really hit home was that my CD4 count – bear in mind that an average healthy human being your CD4 count I think somewhere between 750 to 1200m, that kind of mark – my CD4 count was 23. I mean you could literally line them up on a shelf and name them. And that was the moment when I was like: ‘Shit, I am in trouble.’ You know, I was weeks away from probably not being on this planet. So yes. So it occurred to me last year or the year before that actually if your CD4 count is under 200, that was classified as an AIDS diagnosis. So I had AIDS, it wasn’t even HIV. I mean, I was on death’s door.

Something should be clarified, I suppose, the difference between AIDS and HIV. HIV is a virus that you have whereas AIDS is an abstract thing. It’s an umbrella term for a collection of other diseases or opportunistic viruses that can kill you. AIDS isn’t actually anything that you can literally put in a Petri dish. But if your CD4 count is that low you are given an AIDS diagnosis because you are expected to succumb to what could be a common cold. But it seemed that… Not seemed, but I think for me, I was not willing to go. I mean that is toughness, I think. And having that realisation was really something else, you know.

How else would I describe myself? I’m quite uncompromising, in respects. I haven’t had to compromise with any of my friends or family and look at my life; I mean, I love the people in it. I love my life, so I think that is… Keep other people in consideration but stick to yourself. Y’know, I don’t want to exhaust or wear my friends down by being totally uncompromising but I know they get a lot from me by me just being myself. Yes, in that respects I am, I guess, a glorious contradiction. I’m really contradictory. I think we all are. I am accepting of the fact that I’ve got a really dark side and I think a lot of people don’t and brush it under the carpet and that’s a place where a lot of trouble comes from. Y’know, I’m really… I’m a great loner, I love being on my own, but I love being with my friends and family.

I’m patient, but impatient. I mean, you ask my Dad I am the most impatient fucker around. I have no patience for the smaller things, but I have the most amount of patience in life, for like my career and my writing and my work. HIV activism is a lifetime job. It’s the only job in the world, being an activist, it’s the only job in the world where you’re trying to put yourself out of work because when I don’t have anything to do that means my job’s done, but then I won’t have anything to do. But with my writing career, you know, I’ve waited – which is quite a nice pun, because I have done a lot of waiting in my life – for it to happen, y’know, and I’m enjoying the momentum and I can feel it coming together, finally. And I’m ambitious for it but my ambition has always worked at my own pace. I work at my own pace. So I guess I am more patience than I realise, maybe. I’m proud, really proud. I’m selfish but selfless. I’m loyal, which again some people might scoff at but if you stick with me I’m really loyal. I’ve had friends who I’ve just mistreated and vice versa but we come back to each other. I’m blessed that they have. They know who they are, they know how thankful I am. What else? I guess I’m a bit of a paradox. I love people. I have lots of love. Yeah, I have a lot of love, really. We’re all great in our own ways, even the ones that infuriate you.

I was going to say I’m forgiving but… I don’t know how I feel about the concept of forgiveness ‘cause I kind of feel it’s, I kind of feel like it was invented for the person doing the forgiveness, to let them off the hook, or… Who is it for? You know. I’m forgiving but I’m not forgetting. I think as an activist it’s part of your remit to not forget. Y’know, I came out of the tail-end of the AIDS crisis and I’m not going to forget how our community was treated by others. That’s about it, I think, about me.

I’m independent. I’m curious. I am a big cat, I am a Leo, even though I don’t believe in horoscopes. I kind of think that horoscopes are man’s ego at its very worst. But… I am a big cat and you know what curiosity does to it. I’m… I feel I’m an inspiration to people which I really like, I enjoy doing that because if it helps people it’s good. I’m a flirt. In fact, I am one of nature’s great flirts. I’m an other, I’m not the other. I think language is important. I think the other is dangerous, ‘cause that is a type of exclusion actually, but we are all an other. We can be united in difference. Yeah, I think, I’m happy, basically. Yeah, especially in the last few years, with COVID slowing the world down and kind of brought the world down to my pace, ‘cause I’ve always been somebody who, you know, I’ve always wanted to be the simplest version of myself, actually, so… Seeing the rest of the world get a glimpse of that in tandem with being given the time to do the things that I love and also, you know, discovering I actually had been given an AIDS diagnosis and make me realise what a resurrection I’d gone through, all of this has come together to be… Yeah, I’m happy. I don’t know, I don’t know if I can explain how that makes me feel. I mean, it’s all made me me. And what a me! He’s the only one I’ve got. So, yeah...

You know I really think that COVID has given us a great – shouldn’t really say great – but a great kind of parallel to the HIV/AIDS crisis, y’know. There’s lots of parallels to be drawn, lots of differences to be drawn. I think one of the main ones was kinda like: ‘God, haven’t we learnt the lessons yet?’ Y’know, any pandemic, I mean it starts with the word pan which means all. We really are all in this together. There’s no prejudice to a virus. They don’t have prejudice. And I just don’t feel like we learnt that enough. I think…

What else? Yeah, I feel like… I dunno, I feel like sometimes I take my activism a bit too far because I’m so belligerent with it, but I’m also sick and tired of people not being accepting of it and things and being accepting of others. I mean, I’ve said before it’s my goal to make the other an extinct species. It just shouldn’t exist any more. We’re all on one planet as homo sapiens. Some of us are lucky enough to be homosexuals. Sorry if you’re not. But we are all in this together and I’ve had a real shift of like ‘if you’re not on board with this, I’m calling you out on it.’ I think… Who is it who said…? Oh, I’m totally going to misquote someone here I think it was Eldridge Cleaver that it was attributed to, you know he said like “… if you’re not part of the solution you’re part of the problem.” And it’s so simple. And I know things aren’t black and white but, you know, that really rings true for me. So I am quite belligerent. I’m not hateful. I think, people worry that my reparation has an element of hatred in it, or bitterness ‘cause I certainly sound off against the straights, and straight white men a lot, but I don’t mean it. I think I should be adding more but I don’t really know what to say really. Just, you know, people living with HIV are not defined by it just as nobody is defined by anything. You wouldn’t say somebody with asthma is asthmatic and that’s it. Or, a vegetarian is a vegetarian and that’s it. Or a Muslim is a Muslim and that’s it. Or a woman is a… it’s the same thing, you could list any type of person… We are all everything. We’ve all got our hopes and our fears and our dreams and our worries, they’re all very similar. They all come from the same place. I think, yeah, I’d rather there were less people in the world that I feel I have to work on to convince that we’re actually just all the same but we’re just not there yet are we, really?

You know… being an advocate for love and peace and equality is all very well, but just being loving and peaceful and magnaminous about it… I don’t know if that’s enough. I think we’ve got to be a little bit more… Break some plates on the floor. Or smash some vases. I’m not inciting riots I just mean metaphorically. Some people are going to be upset but that’s the only way we can change things. And it is upsetting, to some people, to change, you know. When it comes to, like… Obviously I wear my HIV ribbon all the time, my red ribbon. I would encourage other people to do this as well: I wear it upside-down because I intend to turn the stigma of HIV on its head. That is one of my ambitions. And kind of my life’s work now. And I wear it upside-down not only because I want the ideas to be turned upside-down, but also when people see it often they say: “That’s upside-down,” and then I will tell them I do it intentionally, I wear it intentionally like that and then of course they ask why and then that opens up the narrative for me to start explaining why everyone’s ideas about HIV are usually often times wrong.

I think, y’know, there’s that one piece of information, that really sublime piece of arithmetic, that’s come out, which is u-equals-u, which is of course is undetectable equals untransmittable and that’s such a game-changer that piece of information that if people can take that, spread it to – spread is an unfortunate or maybe apt choice of word – to ten other people… And they can tell ten other people. I mean, it needs to be… I can’t believe there hasn’t been a Government-backed campaign to share this message. And if anyone from the Government is listening to this I’m getting onto you. I’m getting onto your back soon. I want to get onto them to get this message out there. Because it’ll just take away all the stigma and fear and prejudice of HIV really quickly. If kids are taught this in school within a generation we’ll have no more hate for it.

I think, yeah, you know, the message, the language, how we talk about it, it’s all really important. It’s all vital. When I was living in Tokyo for a spell, for shy of two years, no not even that long, and I was an English teacher and the company I worked for – Berlitz – despite the fact that you are teaching English, my god that company loved an acronym, for everything. If there’s anything they can put in an acronym they will. And I fucking hate an acronym. In fact, I’d say I’m acronymophobic. I became an English teacher because I love the English language, that’s why I’m a writer. It’s the most rich, beautiful language in the world. Anyone who has a problem with that come and see me about it, ‘cause I’ve got the linguistic science to back that up. Y’know its richness is unmatched by any other language. And there’s a lot of things I’m not particularly proud of about England but its language I am, because it’s not English really is it? It’s worldwide, it’s made of all the other languages. So, I hate an acronym and I hated the fact that I was working for an English school that specialised in acronyms, I was like: ‘Just say the words!’ Y’know, don’t be so fucking lazy. I laugh out loud, I don’t LOL. So, HIV obviously is an acronym and nobody likes saying – deep breath - human immunodeficiency virus, even I struggle with that and I’ve had it for fourteen. So, I changed it. And I want it to stand, for me it now stands for Hope Is Viral, because if we can give people hope, especially the newly-diagnosed. And there’s a lot of hope to be had out there, because you live a normal, healthy, wonderful life with these three letters in your bloodstream.

And I think we have to continue spreading hope and hope is really infectious and not just about HIV but all this shit that we’re in at the moment. Climate change, systemic racism, divisive politics;, sexism, still: which really is flabbergasting. It’s all going on. So, we’ve got to keep the hope and that’s viral, so… Spread it on. There is something else I’d like to spread, actually, because a) I can’t spread HIV anymore, so, I’ve got to put something else in the world, but talking about the language we use I think is really important and, you know, I’m entitled to change the language about HIV because I live with it. It’s my prerogative. Also, I’m a writer so I deal with language and I love playing with it but yes, it’s also something I live with so if I can’t call myself what I want to, who can? And on that note I now label myself as HIV-neutral, not HIV-positive, because positive implies it still has some power and it still makes people think it’s got a quality about it which is kind of forceful or can take an action against you whereas neutral totally diffuses it. And I call myself HIV-neutral because the virus has zero power over me anymore. It came, it arrived, it was dealt with. The medication did its work, still does its work. Obviously you have to adhere to your medication. And now HIV has merely left its autograph in my bloodstream, you know. It’s like… It’s kind of like the UK at the Eurovision Song Contest: it has nil points. Or I give it nil points. So, I describe myself, I label myself as HIV-neutral now because it’s just one of the many facets about me that do no harm and I think that’s probably quite a nice place to leave it, so: thanks for listening.